Zaha Hadid Architects presents VR-designed immersive Hi-Fi system

London, September 25, 2019

Over 300 professionals from the architecture, engineering, and construction industries convened at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London for the Build: London event organized and sponsored bt Epic Games. Representatives from 180 companies came to watch a lineup of impressive speakers showcase and discuss some of the innovative ways real-time technology is being used for AEC projects.

Mindesk CEO and Co-founder Gabriele Sorrento announced onstage the latest developments in the company, including the integration of Unreal Engine in the Mindesk platform: "Live Link". It allows bringing Rhino3D models in Unreal in real-time without exporting. When the model is edited, the changes immediately displays in the engine. This allows designers to focus on their work while constantly keeping an eye on a photorealistic render.

Then, Helmut Kinzler, Head of Zaha Hadid Virtual Reality Group and Mindesk CEO Gabriele Sorrento presented the results of joint efforts in expanding the boundaries of real-time immersive design with Unreal Engine. The former introduced Zaha Hadid Architects, which is looking at understanding the real-time immersive domain and all its applications and benefits for the Architectural industry as a whole.  He then unveiled a close look at ZHA's design process of Project Loop, a revolutionary piece of tech furniture.

"Today we want to show you our vision and how we work with Mindesk Team to awaken and immerse ourselves into the design space and benefit from VR, and the immediacy and the sense of presence we get within it."   H.Kinzler

ZH VR engaged with their client L-Acoustic that is a specialist and world leader in audio systems design to create a pilot project that is the loop.

"Loop" is a fully-immersive, omnidirectional soundscape producing Hi-Fi system. It has 23 channels to deliver that omnidirectional sound and uses one kilowatt power to produce that brilliance.

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"I immediately got convinced about Mindesk's vision of creating a VR plugin for Rhino3D, which is one of our main software platforms within the company." H.Kinzler

The keynote included a live demo performed by Aleksandr Mnich, a Senior Designer at Zaha Hadid Architects, who also explained some design principles that inspire the Archistar studio works.

While working in 3D the designer looks the object from the outside and in 1:1 scale to get the sense of sale of the object. The interesting point of VR is that designers understands better what they are doing are doing compared to 2D screens.

Mindesk allows to lock the scale of visualization, which allows to focus on the look of the model, and the review operations. For instance, the designer can observe how the geometry interacts with the underlying structure that needs to be preserved when that comes as a design constraint. One of the key aspects that was solved in VR while developing Loop is the design of the cover for the subwoofer speaker. Initially, the organic curve-generated surfaces were colliding with the structure. The clash was solved by manipulating the surface shape directly freehand.